Hip Hop in Contemporary Jazz Ian Thomas Clarkson [email protected]
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Bates College SCARAB Honors Theses Capstone Projects 5-2018 Opposition to a Neoclassical Scenario: Hip hop in Contemporary Jazz Ian Thomas Clarkson [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses Recommended Citation Clarkson, Ian Thomas, "Opposition to a Neoclassical Scenario: Hip hop in Contemporary Jazz" (2018). Honors Theses. 236. https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/236 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Capstone Projects at SCARAB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of SCARAB. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Opposition to a Neoclassical Scenario: Hip hop in Contemporary Jazz An Honors Thesis Presented to The Faculty and the Department of Music Bates College In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts By Ian Clarkson Lewiston ME March 28th, 2018 Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Dale Chapman for his immense knowledge, patience, care, and guidance throughout this project. I would like to thank the whole of the Bates Music Department for helping to support and nurture my musical endeavors over the past four years and giving me the opportunity to write this thesis. Thank you to the members of my panel for their interest in my research and performance. I would also like to thank my thesis ensemble and the other musicians I have played with over the past four years for playing such a formative role in my musicianship. Thank you to my friends for their continued support and for acting as irreplaceable sources of inspiration. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their constant presence and guidance, which have made my achievements possible. 1 Abstract This project takes up the subject of contemporary jazz musicians who use influences from hip hop music to create new jazz compositions. This musical practice is part of a larger movement in jazz to integrate modern popular culture in a jazz setting; in part as a reaction to a conservative jazz movement that emerged in the 1980s and 90s. During the 1980s and 90s a group of young jazz musicians and critics, often referred to as neoclassicists, established themselves as part of a new iteration of jazz music based upon a conservative understanding of what constitutes the “jazz tradition.” The rigid adherence of neoclassicists to conventional jazz styles served an overall ideology of “respectability politics.” Hip hop-inflected jazz is one specific manifestation of a modern movement to include more recent popular music in the genre. The importance of this movement resides in its distinctive cultural and political dimensions. In both its aesthetic and conceptual elements, hip hop-based jazz presents itself as a product of contemporary African American intellectual thought. As a genre, hip hop-based jazz has received criticisms for its perceived accessibility and commercialism, and for whether it serves the perceived cultural prestige that neoclassicists associate with the music. Despite this criticism, many jazz musicians are establishing hip hop-based jazz as a new genre that has helped to democratize and politicize the genre based upon shared cultures, a reintroduction of dance sensibilities, and through emulation of music created through new technologies of production. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………..1 Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………2 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..4 Different Conceptions of Jazz Historiography……………………………………...…….5 The Relationship Between Jazz and Hip Hop……………………………………………11 Chapter 1: Neoclassical Ideologies in Jazz………………………………………….…………...15 The “Young Lions”………………………………………………………………………15 Miles Davis………………………………………………………………………………18 Neoclassicism and “Cultural Moynihanism”…………………………………………….24 Jazz at Lincoln Center……………………………………………………………………28 Chapter 2: From Jazz to Hip Hop……………………………………………………………….34 1980s and 90s Rap “Respectability Politics”…………………………………………….35 “So What’s the Scenario”………………………………………………………………..40 Jazz Musicians Create Rap Music……………………………………………………….42 Chapter 3: Hip Hop Innovation and Conceptions of Genre:…...…………………………..……51 The Musical Contributions of J Dilla……………….…………………………….……...52 Andre 3000’s Views on Musical Genre………………………………………………….58 Chapter 4: From Hip hop to Jazz………………………………………………………………..61 Herbie Hancock………………………………………………………………………….61 The Los Angeles Scene…………………………………………………………………..63 Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah and his Musical Approach to “Identity Politics”.............71 The Commercial Appeal of Hip Hop-Inflected Jazz and BADBADNOTGOOD……….76 Chapter 5: The Music of Hip Hop-Inflected Jazz…………………………………..…………...82 Robert Glasper— “Stella By Starlight”.............................................................................82 Figure: “Stella By Starlight” Robert Glasper Piano Voicings.……………...…...85 Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah— “Diaspora”...................................................................88 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….93 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..……....98 3 Introduction In April of 2015, I first heard Kendrick Lamar’s critically acclaimed album To Pimp a Butterfly. As a classically trained musician who had only recently discovered jazz and who had little exposure to hip hop, I found myself amazed at how Lamar integrated the two seemingly disparate genres to create one coherent musical experience. Starting with the first track of the album, “Wesley’s Theory,” I was amazed by the album’s production, which employed a unique combination of samples and live instruments with interesting jazz-inspired harmonies. Upon hearing the second track of the album, “For Free,” my amazement was intensified. Essentially, Lamar had taken a jazz bebop track and rapped over the music, with his rapping taking on the aspect of another soloist in the music. With each new track I was amazed with how the production remained constantly changing and new, but also with the way that Lamar incorporated influences from genres such as hip hop, jazz, funk, soul, and R&B. The final track of the album, “Mortal Man,” constituted a jazz piece in the form of a suite, showing a unique influence from classical music. After my first listen-through of Lamar’s album, I found myself drawn to the combination of jazz and hip hop, and I immediately tried to find other artists working in this area. I first sought out the musicians that had collaborated with Lamar on the production for the album; which featured jazz artists or jazz-influenced artists such as Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Stephen Bruner (better known as Thundercat), and Terrace Martin. As I explored each of these musicians and their catalogues of music, I began to realize that the genres of jazz and rap were intimately connected, and I began to seek out more collaborations between jazz and hip hop musicians on hip hop albums. I soon discovered that over the course of the past decade, musicians such as Glasper had begun to create jazz music that was heavily indebted to hip hop 4 and combined two seemingly disparate genres of music into one cohesive genre. For me, as a student just beginning to explore jazz, Lamar’s album provided an accessible way to also explore the genre of hip hop. In numerous other cases, Lamar’s album introduced hip hop fans to the world of jazz. In this project, I will argue that the inclusion of rap elements in contemporary jazz is establishing a new movement in jazz history. Jazz and hip hop musicians are able to cite similarities in the two music’s histories and cultures that situate both genres as part of a larger continuum of African American musical legacies. Additionally, I assert that in much the same way that swing, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, fusion, and neoclassical jazz have all manifested themselves as reactions to previous movements in jazz history, hip hop-based jazz is part of a larger reaction to the neoclassical movement. As a genre, hip hop-based jazz has been and to a certain extent still is, the object of well-worn criticisms over accessibility and commercialism, and over whether or not it serves the perceived cultural prestige of the music. Despite these criticisms, hip hop-based jazz musicians established their music as a new genre in jazz that has helped to democratize and politicize the genre based on shared cultures. This democratization and politicization can be understood as a reaction to the more conservative musical politics that surrounded jazz music in the 1980s and 90s. Different Conceptions of Jazz Historiography Many contemporary jazz musicians have begun to adopt influences from hip hop into their own jazz compositions. This jazz compositional practice has become part of a longstanding tradition and debate among musicians and critics in jazz music over how to define jazz as a genre, and over what types of music get to be called “jazz.” In his influential 1991 article 5 “Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography,” Scott DeVeaux argued that jazz historians, musicians, and critics should reconsider how they present the history of jazz. DeVeaux argued that the existence of one definable “jazz tradition” was a recent construction, rather than constituting an objective historical reality. The use of the term “jazz tradition” by jazz historians and critics is in line with a jazz historiography that has tended to ignore the social significance of the music in order to focus on its aesthetic